Developer experiments with affordable condos near downtown Vancouver

No parking and no maintenance among the perks lost to make housing for couple working minimum wage

Francis Bula | Vancouver | The Globe and Mail | Monday July 27, 2010

No parking. No fancy finishes. No costly marketing program. No speculators. No one who isn’t willing to do some building maintenance.

That’s the condo experiment that one Vancouver developer is trying in an effort to build housing in the city priced low enough that a couple working minimum-wage jobs could afford it.

“Our objective was to continue the legacy we started at Woodward’s and, at the same time, we didn’t want to just bring a bunch of BMWs into the neighbourhood,” said developer Ian Gillespie. He submitted his application last week for the unusual project at 60 West Cordova…

The 108-unit project is a collaboration involving Vancity credit union, Habitat for Humanity and a Downtown Eastside housing group. Habitat will get four condos suitable for families in the building and will choose who gets them. Another eight units, to be managed by the PHS housing society, will go to local community workers.

The remaining 96 condos will go to buyers who will have to prove that they plan to live in the units and who agree to do some maintenance themselves instead of just paying standard condo-maintenance fees. According to the material submitted to the city, nearly three-quarters of the condos will sell for less than $300,000, and more than half will be affordable to people making between $29,000 and $36,000 a year. That’s the income of an individual earning $15-$19 an hour, or a couple in which each partner makes the $8-an-hour minimum wage.

Architect Gregory Henriquez said the idea of requiring owners to also occupy the condos as a way to keep prices down is something he adopted from his early days of living in the West End. Then, before the legislation that created individual condo ownership was brought in, the only way for someone to own an apartment was to own the whole building co-operatively with a group…

Read the full article at theglobeandmail.com.

The Woodward’s Project: Coming soon, the insider’s book

Brian Hutchinson June 23, 2010 – 7:00 am

From the folio “Demolition: September 30, 2006,” by Shawn Lapointe, in the book “Body Heat.”

Something that makes Woodward’s so complex and fascinating is the crazily diverse cast of characters responsible for it. Their stories are well told and illustrated in a meaty, good looking book for release this fall. Body Heat: The Story of the Woodward’s Redevelopment is published by a small house in Vancouver called Blueimprint and is edited by Robert Enright. I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy. It’s very good. The interviews and memoirs inside are enlightening and frank, and while some things aren’t said, a great deal is. Here’s a snip from a Jim Green anecdote, about one Governor General’s Downtown Eastside visit during the redevelopment negotiations phase:

“…there was some commotion as we turned onto Hastings. We realized Adrienne Clarkson wasn’t prepared to walk across the street. So we had to circle around Cordova and come back on the south side of Hastings right in front of Pigeon Park Savings, so that she could get off the bus and walk directly into the reception, catered by Bishop’s Restaurant, which was all shrouded off so nobody could see in. And she talks about how we have to embrace our new immigrants. I left the minute the dinner was finished.”

…The many voices and brilliant pictures from artists and designers don’t align to form one monolithic view, which is part of the book’s value. Here’s from an account called The Healing Place, by Liz Evans. She’s co-founder of the Portland Hotel Society, a non-profit that operates 125 units of single occupancy, non-market housing inside Woodward’s:

“When they were marketing the condos for the Woodward’s project, our advice was just don’t lie. Put the homeless people on the advertising posters, put on the guy with the guitar and the bottle in his hand. It’s stupid to pretend otherwise. Try and attract people who want to be in a diverse, urban community, people who get how amazing this community is…if we start filling 600 new condos with people who are going to call the cops every time they see a homeless person, then we’ve failed. We’ve created a total nightmare for the community.”

The marketing people behind the Woodward’s project did put a guy holding a guitar on their advertising posters. These are usefully represented in Body Heat. The man isn’t clutching a bottle. He looks like a friendly, bearded busker. A marketing lie? Well, he’s not the whole truth, of course. The marketing people sold out the pricey market condos in a single day.

Who are these people who bought in? How many of them live here? How far really does the Woodward’s ballyhooed inclusivity stretch? Here’s where I’ve come in, I hope. I’m living at Woodward’s for one more week, the fourth. Not nearly done yet. There’s more big-picture Woodward’s impact stuff to come, and more upstairs/downstairs inside looks. To fully grasp the story, you’ll have to wait, and get the book.

Read more at nationalpost.com.

The Woodward’s Project: Award winning parking, easy on the eyes. Who’d have thought?

Brian Hutchinson June 16, 2010 – 6:30 am

Photo: Christopher Grabowski

Can a parkade possibly be interesting? Photogenic? Award worthy? Surprisingly, yes. When local architect Gregory Henriquez, managing partner of Henriquez Partners, designed the massive, 830-stall Gastown Parkades for the City of Vancouver, he saw beyond the mundane. Before landing the commission early in the last decade, Mr. Henriquez recognized that the $32 million parking structure could be something more than just functional, and part of something bigger.

The Gastown Parkades were completed in 2004. They straddle the alleyway separating Water Street in Gastown and Cordova Street, hence the plural “parkades,” I suppose. A year later they captured an award of excellence from something called the International Parking Institute. When you think about it, why shouldn’t good parkades be recognized?

Across Cordova was the old Woodward’s department store, sitting empty. It was to come down and the area revitalized with a mixed housing and retail development. City planners always had in mind that one day, the two projects would meet. And so they have. The Gastown Parkades and the Henriquez-designed Woodward’s district are now linked by a glass-encased bridge. Many of the residents in the Woodward’s development’s two tall condominium towers are assigned stalls inside the parkades.

Like any inner-city parkade, these ones have issues with vagrants. A couple of secondary stairwells are used for unseemly things. Some of them smell awful, and you can guess why. But I’ve used the place to park on occasion and haven’t had a problem at all. The main access points and elevators are fine. The security seems reasonable, despite the secondary stairwells stuff, and the men who patrol the structure are pleasant. Once I learned to navigate from street level to my favourite spot on Level Four, next to the pedestrian bridge that connects the parkades to the Woodward’s development, I began to look around. Features I’d overlooked suddenly popped out: the drainage and filtration system for moving Vancouver’s copious rainfall; the use of three kinds of stone on street facades that subtly reflect the district’s heritage; the ivy that covers the Water Street facade; the use of colours, textures and other detail.

Perhaps the most impressive thing is how well the Gastown Parkades integrate with Gastown and Woodward’s. The building is playing an important role in the Downtown Eastside’s slow renewal. It’s prescient. And easy on the eyes.

Photo: Brian Hutchinson

Read more from The Woodward’s Project at nationalpost.com.